cornerofmadness

I wanted to ramble on a bit about self-publishing. But first here listen to Maggie Stiefvater on Self-publishing (also, do a little research before talking to your favorite author, people.)

I have very mixed feelings about this being the future of publishing to be honest. I have friends who are going that route (I've even had some featured on my blog).

cajunshewolf is doing that. My friend Thomas Hart was thrilled by the idea and he had very logical reasons for it, heading the list being getting screwed over by publishers.

That is definitely in the plus side of self publishing. Frankly that's about the biggest one. You get all your profits.

But I see a lot of negatives to both the reader and the author. For the reader, for every good author who has done the work, gotten beta readers, edited their work etc etc, there are 10 people who have done nothing but publish their first drafts filled with grammar errors, plot holes and any number of issues the least competent editor would have fixed. It's gotten to the point I only read a self-pub if it has been recommended by a friend.

As an author, the negatives can be pretty steep too. I can tell you from experience with an indie publishers it is SO HARD to market your book and manage the social media. So as a self pubber you have to make your own blurb, your own cover and do all your own marketing. How do you handle getting anyone at all to look at your book? At least with a publisher, you have some help there. they get you in front of reviewers and to various sellers. You can use some of your fellow authors to help do a virtual book tour. The publisher often sets up book signings etc.

You can do some on your own, but now you have to build twitter followers, facebook etc (well you need to do that any how but at least with a publisher pushing people your way it's helpful). So then you have this self published book, what do you do?

I wish I knew because as an indie/small publishing house author, I face a lot of the same things. I see a lot of my fellow authors do book trailers. I asked about those here a while back and most of us were unaware of their existence. I can tell you I have never looked at youtube to find my next read. Maybe I should but i wouldn't even know how to search for it efficiently.

So you have a huge mountain of work on one side of self -publishing AND a very skeptical readership who aren't exactly clamoring for a new author, completely unknown and on the other side, you are in complete control.

Will I self publish some day? Maybe. I'd like it to have several years more to work out the bugs first. Let's see if it really is the new publishing world.

Yearly word count (I upped my goal)